Rodborough Common

If you want a day out with (or without) the family in a great beauty spot, we cannot think of a better place on a warm day than Rodborough Common: a blessedly uncommercialised 300 acres – it's  managed by the National Trust – about 600 feet above sea level, south-west of Stroud.  The views are almost breath-taking and the butterflies aren't bad either.

I was first told about RC by Ian Roberts, who knows it well and will soon, I hope, contribute a lot more to this article than I am able to.  I was interested when he told me that it was a resting-place for Welsh drovers: there's a large “Little London” settlement on the western slope, but I have no more information about it than that because no one was at home to answer our questions.  (Perhaps they knew we were coming.)

I have little more to add.  There are two cattle ponds at the top, a grim-looking fort surrounded with pines originally built by George Hawker - not, as I wrote before, by a king terrified of the French; my thanks to Anna for pointing that out - some friendly cattle and the impressive stockade-like Little London overlooking the Severn.

We had a memorable afternoon.


(Pictures: #1 is looking back; in #3 the second pond is invisible, but the bullock shows where it is; hope you see the Severn in #4)